are wholly subject for effect on the vagaries of the local weather; low humidity robs the agents of effect quickly, high humidity causes them to persist; favourable wind direction carries them into the enemy positions, unfavourable wind direction causes ‘blow back’ or results in dispersion away from the battlefield. The Iraqis in the Majnun Islands encountered all those conditions; the Iranians, by contrast, soon acquired protective clothing and antidotes which rendered the use of chemical agents pointless.
In the long run, Saddam’s resort to chemical weapons was to do him nothing but harm. Not only did his chemical warfare campaign fail to achieve its intended results; it also alerted the attention of the United Nations. The use of chemical weapons had been outlawed by the League of Nations during the 1920s and the ban had been sustained with remarkable consistency throughout the Second World War and afterwards. As one of the few demonstrable successes of international arms control, the United Nations was determined to support it and in March 1984 a team of UN inspectors was despatched to Iran to investigate its complaints. The team confirmed that Iraq had broken the ban, a report that prejudiced most countries previously favourable to Saddam against him. For a time Saddam was brought to desist;in 1987–88, however, he resumed his use of chemical weapons, in that period against his own people in Kurdistan, in an attempt to terrorize them against co-operating with Iranian incursions into their area. Notoriously, at Halabjah in March 1988, his use of chemical agents killed at least 5,000 Kurdish civilians in an operation directed by his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, later to be known as ‘Chemical Ali’.
Between 1984 and 1988, however, Saddam’s distasteful reputation as a chemical warmaker was offset in foreign opinion by what appeared to be the much more threatening behaviour of his enemies, both in Iran and in the wider Middle Eastern world. The ayatollahs made no attempt to placate either the West or the Soviet Union. They persisted in persecuting the Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party, and they made little effort to disguise their links with Islamic anti-Western terrorists. The Syrians, meanwhile, were continuing to provide refuge and training facilities to a number of violent Islamic terrorist groups and President Gaddafi so provoked the United States by his support for terrorists that it launched airstrikes against Libya in early 1986. In these circumstances it was comparatively easy for Saddam to represent himself as a force for stability in a troubled region. He was, from the middle of the Iran–Iraq War, certainly so treated. The small Gulf States, terrified that Iran might infect their populations with anti-monarchist and fundamentalist feeling, increased their donations to Iraq’s war chest, eventually to the tune of $25 billion. The Soviet Union began to supply high-technology equipment, including intermediate range missiles, capable of reaching Iran’s major cities from Iraqi bases. Egypt recycled some of its Soviet equipment to help Iraq with spare parts. France, if on a strictly financial basis, delivered dozens of high-performance strike aircraft, enhancing Iraqi capability to attack the Iranian tanker trade.
Most tellingly of all, the United States, which had throughout the years of Saddam’s rise kept Iraq on its list of countries suspected of supporting international terrorism, now decided that a shift of policy would be advantageous. Saddam’s enemies were also America’s, a perception heightened by anti-American terroristoutrages in Lebanon in 1983, when, in what was to prove the first instalment of suicide bombing, a Marine barracks was truck-bombed with great loss of life, following a devastating attack on the US embassy in the city. Saddam’s Foreign Minister was invited to Washington; in December 1983 his visit was returned by Donald Rumsfeld, then acting as a special Middle Eastern
In the long run, Saddam’s resort to chemical weapons was to do him nothing but harm. Not only did his chemical warfare campaign fail to achieve its intended results; it also alerted the attention of the United Nations. The use of chemical weapons had been outlawed by the League of Nations during the 1920s and the ban had been sustained with remarkable consistency throughout the Second World War and afterwards. As one of the few demonstrable successes of international arms control, the United Nations was determined to support it and in March 1984 a team of UN inspectors was despatched to Iran to investigate its complaints. The team confirmed that Iraq had broken the ban, a report that prejudiced most countries previously favourable to Saddam against him. For a time Saddam was brought to desist;in 1987–88, however, he resumed his use of chemical weapons, in that period against his own people in Kurdistan, in an attempt to terrorize them against co-operating with Iranian incursions into their area. Notoriously, at Halabjah in March 1988, his use of chemical agents killed at least 5,000 Kurdish civilians in an operation directed by his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, later to be known as ‘Chemical Ali’.
Between 1984 and 1988, however, Saddam’s distasteful reputation as a chemical warmaker was offset in foreign opinion by what appeared to be the much more threatening behaviour of his enemies, both in Iran and in the wider Middle Eastern world. The ayatollahs made no attempt to placate either the West or the Soviet Union. They persisted in persecuting the Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party, and they made little effort to disguise their links with Islamic anti-Western terrorists. The Syrians, meanwhile, were continuing to provide refuge and training facilities to a number of violent Islamic terrorist groups and President Gaddafi so provoked the United States by his support for terrorists that it launched airstrikes against Libya in early 1986. In these circumstances it was comparatively easy for Saddam to represent himself as a force for stability in a troubled region. He was, from the middle of the Iran–Iraq War, certainly so treated. The small Gulf States, terrified that Iran might infect their populations with anti-monarchist and fundamentalist feeling, increased their donations to Iraq’s war chest, eventually to the tune of $25 billion. The Soviet Union began to supply high-technology equipment, including intermediate range missiles, capable of reaching Iran’s major cities from Iraqi bases. Egypt recycled some of its Soviet equipment to help Iraq with spare parts. France, if on a strictly financial basis, delivered dozens of high-performance strike aircraft, enhancing Iraqi capability to attack the Iranian tanker trade.
Most tellingly of all, the United States, which had throughout the years of Saddam’s rise kept Iraq on its list of countries suspected of supporting international terrorism, now decided that a shift of policy would be advantageous. Saddam’s enemies were also America’s, a perception heightened by anti-American terroristoutrages in Lebanon in 1983, when, in what was to prove the first instalment of suicide bombing, a Marine barracks was truck-bombed with great loss of life, following a devastating attack on the US embassy in the city. Saddam’s Foreign Minister was invited to Washington; in December 1983 his visit was returned by Donald Rumsfeld, then acting as a special Middle Eastern
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